Our Evenings

In 1961, 13-year-old David Win has the cards stacked against him. He’s the son of a Burmese father he never met and a single white British mother who is just trying to make ends meet. He is also a gay scholarship student at an elite all-boys school, where he is sometimes tormented for his differences. In his 20s, David gets involved in alternative theater. Although he finds like-minded actors, mainstream producers regularly cast him as a background, nonspecific Asian. Hollinghurst’s (The Sparsholt Affair) lyrically laborious coming-of-age story follows David from high school through his golden years as he deals with microaggressions, homophobia, and racism. Narrator Prasanna Puwanarajah uses various British accents that reflect the characters’ socioeconomic statuses. David is subdued, whereas several of his high school classmates are more posh. Puwanarajah’s first-person narration flows like a memoir. Part I of the novel is like a daily journal; Part II is like a series of vignettes where time passes quickly.